Torah books taken from a synagogue destroyed by Russian airstrikes, were brought to Israel, officials said on Monday.
The operation to rescue the two volumes of the text took nearly nine months and an attempt to extract several others from the ruins, is still ongoing.
Efforts to remove the Torah scrolls began shortly after the start of the Russian invasion, last February, when a rabbi in an east Ukraine town decided to move them to a safer location. A month later, the synagogue was hit by a Russian airstrike.
Many other synagogues in Ukraine were damaged by the war, including the one located in Mariupol which was under siege and intense bombing for months.
When the situation continued to worsen, the rabbi – who managed to escape the town – called on the Jewish community to help bring the books that remained behind to him so that they may be delivered to Israel.
In an effort taken on by Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors, the books were transported by bicycles to a meeting point, where they were taken by car away from the area.
Since the town was already under Russian occupation, the books were transported to another east European country, and delivered to a person who was preparing to immigrate to Israel. But the plan hit a snag when the man failed to declare the books to customs upon boarding his flight, and they were confiscated.
After efforts to retrieve them, they were finally put on a flight to Israel.
Israeli customs also confiscated the Torah's, fearing they were stolen and only after the intervention of Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine and then member of Knesset Michael Malkieli, was the misunderstanding cleared up.